Moxi DVRs Coming to a Store Near You

Digeo's Moxi set-top DVRs have been sold for years through cable providers, but Digeo says this is the year the devices will appear in stores. Actually, the company told me the same thing last year at CES, but the device never became available direct to consumers. I'll choose to believe them this time, though.

That's because Diego has announced a deal with an actual retailer: Amazon.com. The Moxi HD DVR is available for purchase from Amazon.com's Electronics Store. The announcement was made during a press conference held at the 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show.

The Moxi DVR has a custom interface that lets you bring all of your favorite cable TV HD content (scheduled TV or stuff you've already recorded on the DVR) together in one programming guide, along with a growing array of digital content from the Web, like movies, music, pictures, and games.

I found the DVR's interface to be pretty cool and user-friendly. It lets you quickly scroll horizontally through the various functions of the system. After selecting one (Recorded TV, for example), a list of selections displays vertically, you just scroll through them and pick what you want. The box sports two HD tuners as well as a generous 500 GB of storage space for your favorite movies (about 75 hours full 1080p video) and other media.

The Moxi Multi-room DVR system consists of a large-ish set-top box that sits near your TV set and stores your content and some smaller extender boxes that store no content but bring the video (as well as music and photos) to other TVs in the house over your existing cable wiring.